


mente et artificio

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: ipsa scientia potestas est [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternian Empire, Beforus, Gen, SGRUB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 15:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: The thing about a troll caegar is that no matter how you flip it, it lands on the same face. Two identical faces. Two different sides. Sort of like the divergences between Alternia and Beforus, and diverging choices of the otherwise identical tealblood women inhabiting each universe.(a small character study)





	mente et artificio

**Author's Note:**

> pretentious latin title translation = "with mind and skill"

In a kinder world, you would have grown up in a place where the sunlight didn’t burn, with your vision intact to your last moment. You would have felt it on your shoulders as you skateboarded up streets, and down thoroughfares, shaded partially from its warmth by the great form of your dragon lusus flying a few hundred feet above you.

You would have gone to the arcade each day, assuming you weren’t stuck in school feeding, armed with energy grubs and jibes, trading both with the only troll who ever broke any of of your high scores.

Slowly, moving over half-pipes and under overpasses, you would have fallen in love with him, and he with you. He would have been a bit of a douche, but so would you. You would have made awful double-entendres about your friends, cackling with your heads together, and your hands clasped.

Your moirail would have been an attractive troll with a cooler head than most, and she would have tried, and failed, to breed the genesis frog despite every fucking game mechanic you tried to exploit in order to aid her. You would have ultimately had no choice but to watch your friends initiate something called the Scratch.

And you would have died at the age of nine sweeps old. Was that world really kinder in the end?

In the Scratched world, where you die at seventy and some sweeps of age, you live nearly half your natural lifespan. However, you have a lot more scars to show for it.

Your body is one long litany of ways trolls have tried to prevent you from ensuring that justice be served, or tried to prevent you from making your own justice.

From the teal and gray around your neck where the noose chafed, when you are buried with full rites as per the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs - your moirail would insist your spirit had earned the right to traverse to Shangri-La, although you had never been a subjugglator and never believed - to the far less fatal scars crisscrossing your form.

(You would be battle-weary and battle-battered, although this would always be true, even in universes where the scars don't show.)

Your nose, once straight, would later grow aquiline from being broken too many times in combat. Scars decorate your back, your stomach, your legs, your arms, from strife, from duels, from the actions convicted trolls who decided their final acts would be to vent their frustrations on the smallest legislacerator on the legal team. And finally come your bad eyes, from when you looked into the rising sun as a wiggler, and the wings of your lusus couldn’t shield your squinting gaze from partial blindness in time.

In both universes, regardless of when you die, you will stand at 155 cm and 50 kg, much of it in muscle. You will always be tiny for a tealblood. Sometimes, that will work to your advantage.

In one universe, you will master the arcade, knowing when to mash buttons, when to jump, when to duck, the glare of the screen glinting off your glasses. From skateboarding, you will develop split second reaction times that surprise those around you, especially when you easily leap around the lily-pads on the Land of Silk and Frogs, to the shock of your moirail.

In another universe, you will learn when to jump and duck with the stakes slightly higher, learning your way around a sabre, around a set of knuckledusters, around a dagger, around whatever you can get your hands on, even if it’s a only textbook, but you will always favor your cane. White as fresh snow, red as surging danger.

In both universes, you will be underestimated, although for different reasons. And in both universes, you will let trolls underestimate you. Don’t show your hand unless it’s necessary, or unless it would be especially amusing. Let them think you know less than you do. That is how you gain the advantage. That is how you tip the scale.

You will always be good at tipping scales, at tripping trolls with dialogue, at wordplay, at saying precisely what you mean to say, to manipulate minds into assuming what you need them to assume. You won’t do it as literally as your cohorts a shade above you on the hemospectrum, not with subtle but brute force and total mind control. No, you’ll never turn anyone into a puppet that way. But you will have your own irons in the fire, and you'll find your own way to keep them burning.

This in order to protect yourself, and to protect others, even when they cannot see the machinations of your grand designs.

No one will fathom you fully - to your advantage, to your detriment - with your eyes teal as ponds but depthless as oceans. You’ll prefer to keep it that way. Always underestimated, always unexpected, but there will be a careful methodology to your seeming senselessness.

Both times over. On both sides of the caegar. That will be a constant, among many constants.

You will achieve many great things, and you will commit many atrocities, often simultaneously.

In one universe, among other things, you will try to rebuild the mind of one whom you love dearly, until you realize that this may be as good as it gets. But you're okay with it. You love him.

In another universe, among other things, you will try to dismantle an entire system for those you have come to revere, until you meet your unexpected end. And you'll resent it. You nearly trusted her, and she used her vision eightfold against you.

You will stare down your reflection and scarcely recognize it some days, wounded, crying, injured, but not beaten. You will pound your knuckles against the wall and force yourself to get back up, even when it hurts, even when you can’t keep them all safe, even when you can’t even pretend you can, even when the flame of your faith in your ideals burns low.

_ GC: wh4t 4m 1 3v3n do1ng 4nymor3 c4n w3 3v3n w1n th3 g4m3 now?  _

(GC: 1t f33ls 4s 1f 1 t4k3 two st3ps b4ck for 3v3ry st3p 1 t4k3 forw4rd but…) 

_ GC: 1 just c4nt g1v3 up though. th3r3s 4lw4ys som3th1ng.  _

(GC: ...1 w1ll not 4llow mys3lf to w4v3r. 1 shalll th1nk of 4 b3tt3r w4y.) 

_ Your name is… _

(Your name is…)

** Your name is, and always will be...  **

~~====== > The Knight of Mind~~

~~====== > Neophyte Redglare ~~

**....LATULA PYROPE. **

What will you do?

~~ _(What have you done...?)_ ~~

~~_ (What would you have done...?) _ ~~

~~_ (What have you been forced to do...?) _ ~~

~~_ (What have you wished to do...?) _ ~~

~~_ (What have you tried to do...?) _ ~~

~~_ (What have you very nearly decided to do...?) _ ~~


End file.
